American tennis player and mathematician
Gilbert Agnew Hunt, Jr. (March 4, 1916 – May 30, 2008)[ 1] was an American mathematician and amateur tennis player active in the 1930s and 1940s.
Early life and education
Hunt was born in Washington, D.C. and attended Eastern High School .[ 3]
Tennis career
Hunt reached the quarterfinals of the U.S. National Championships in 1938 and 1939 .
Scientific career
Hunt received his bachelor's degree from George Washington University in 1938 and his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1948 under Salomon Bochner . Hunt became a mathematics professor at Princeton University specializing in probability theory ,[ 2] Markov processes , and potential theory .[ 1]
The Hunt process is named after him. He was an Invited Speaker at the ICM in 1962 in Stockholm. His doctoral students include Robert McCallum Blumenthal and Richard M. Dudley .
Hunt's theorem
Hunt's theorem states that for a large class of positive kernels
V
{\displaystyle V}
satisfying "the complete maximum principle" of potential theory , there corresponds a contraction resolvent and associated sub-Markovian semigroup
P
t
{\displaystyle P_{t}}
with
V
f
=
∫
0
∞
P
t
f
d
t
.
{\displaystyle Vf=\int _{0}^{\infty }P_{t}fdt~.}
(
V
{\displaystyle V}
is called the "potential kernel" of the semigroup.)[ 4]
Selected publications
References
^ a b c O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F. , "Gilbert Hunt" , MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive , University of St Andrews
^ a b Joe Holley , Obituary: Gilbert Hunt Jr., 92; Math and Tennis Ace , The Washington Post , 11 June 2008.
^ Holley, Joe (June 11, 2008). "Gilbert Hunt Jr., 92; Math and Tennis Ace" . The Washington Post . ISSN 0190-8286 . Retrieved May 8, 2022 .
^ Mitro, Joanna (1991). "Review of Probabilités et potentiel by Claude Dellacherie and Paul-André Meyer, 1987" . Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. (N.S.) . 24 : 471– 477. doi :10.1090/S0273-0979-1991-16069-6 . (See p. 475.)
External links
Gilbert Hunt at the Association of Tennis Professionals
Kitta MacPherson, Gilbert Hunt, probability expert, dies at 92 , «Princeton Weekly Bulletin» June 16, 2008, Vol. 97, No. 29.
O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F. , "Gilbert Agnew Hunt" , MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive , University of St Andrews
Gilbert Hunt at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
Gilbert Agnew Hunt, Jr. - Dolph Briscoe Center for American History Archived 2020-09-20 at the Wayback Machine
International National Academics Other